time against us, miles between us
by hypotheticalfanfic
Summary: "Rose would shoot someone for a TARDIS. Or a teleporter like on Star Trek. Or a bloody magic carpet — anything that could get her to America faster." Rose x AlternaTen in Pete's Universe.


Rose would shoot someone for a TARDIS. Or a teleporter like on _Star Trek_. Or a bloody magic carpet — anything that could get her to America faster. John's hurt, she can _feel_ it somehow, and she's not there, and he's over in stupid America with their stupid version of stupid Torchwood and why did they ever agree to split up? Nothing good ever happens when they're split up. And she can feel him hurting, feel him crying out in pain, and the zeppelin is just hanging in the sky, not doing its goddamn job, and UNIT and Torchwood refused to give her a transporter because of the stupid fabric of space and time, and who gives a shit about space and time when her…whatever he is…is in pain? Not Rose bloody Tyler, that's for sure.

The zeppelin won't go any faster, she's already threatened them with everything from fines to UNIT sanctions to fatal doses of the poison Torchwood's extracted from a meteorite-shaped ship they found last year. No matter, no help, nothing to do but pace and panic and wait. She eventually takes a sleeping pill: four hours more and they'll land, one hour's drive from the airport to the American Torchwood's western base, and then who knows where he is from there. She fights the pill half-consciously, not meaning to, still feeling hellishly guilty at sleeping when he needs her. But then, she won't sleep a wink once they land, not until they're sleeping in the same bed again, so perhaps it'll even out in the end.

Eventually she stops fighting. Slips into a half-dream, thinking about their morning last week before he boarded the zeppelin to America. Thinks about making love, soft and quiet in the morning light, a look in his eyes like he wasn't really there. Thinks about the ways he's been stranger, softer with her lately. It's not just the baby, she knows that; she's only three months along, no need to worry yet, but it's something. Maybe it is the baby — not the potential for deformity or mutation, like they'd first worried, but its very existence.

She knows that the Doctor (she's stopped saying the "real" Doctor, ever since he changed his name to John) had children, before, on Gallifrey, and has scrupulously avoided having more (the accident of Genny notwithstanding). When they first found out, she'd offered to get rid of it. She hadn't had any particular plans to have children, although if she had it'd be with him, and it wasn't illegal or immoral or any of that. But he had said no, he'd asked her to hold off, just for a while, until they found out what his half-Time Lord biology might do to it. When Torchwood assured them that the scans were normal — and after John checked them himself, as well, because Torchwood means well but they aren't above lying, of course — they'd decided to keep it, and now it was due in July.

Rose dozes lightly. Dreams in a hazy way about a house with a baby and a husband and a garden out front, a life she'd never really wanted but seemed to be finding herself in. Of course, they aren't married, probably won't ever be, legal nonsense makes John's place in this universe a bit confusing. And they'll never leave London, never, it's too perfect for them: light and noise and running, always running, and everyone together and arguing and talking, lots of talking. And as has happened since she met the Doctor, almost, she dreams about him. Dreams about him alone and heartbroken — she'd seen Donna, understood, known what he would have to do even as it shattered her heart. Dreams about him ruining himself, losing his control. And she tells herself to stop, that he's fine, that he's a bloody Time Lord, he can handle it.

She dreams more, twisted strange images, snatches of conversations she hasn't heard yet with glimmers of gold on the edges, and she dreams (although she won't remember) about being the Bad Wolf, about seeing everything and being everywhere for a moment, and about the burning glorious shining pain of that knowledge, and she dreams that Donna Noble is there, and they're laughing about it together, the way it hurts and makes them better and scares them all at the same time, and then they both lose it. The Doctor takes it from both of them, to save their lives, and Donna gets the worse end of the stick by far, and Rose wakes up with tears drying on her cheeks and a whistle in her ear telling her that they're landing.

As she disembarks, he's there, waiting, a bandage wrapped around his shoulder and his head and what looks like a cast on his foot. He's slow-moving and he's broken but he's alive, and she can barely breathe when she hugs him. And as they pull apart, some echo of Bad Wolf slips out of her and says, "The baby's name is Donna."

And he looks at her with those eyes, pure Time Lord for a moment, and says, "Of course."


End file.
